North Way Bible Church

In the climax of this series in Genesis 22, God tests Abraham’s trust by asking him to give up Isaac, the son he loves and has waited years for. God invites us to trust that He is good even when we’re afraid of losing what matters most to us. When we are willing to trust God with what we live for we experience true life, the kind of life that Jesus promises. 

Walking with God is made up of a few big moments and a multitude of little opportunities for growth. In Genesis 21, Isaac’s birth reveals God’s kindness and faithfulness, while Abraham’s responses to difficult situations show his growing willingness to trust God and act differently. As we remember what the big moments teach us about God, we can embrace the little opportunities to trust and obey Hi...

Genesis 20 details Abraham’s relapse into deception by passing off his wife Sarah as his sister to King Abimelech out of fear, directly endangering the fulfillment of God's covenant promises. Despite Abraham's moral failure and self-justification, God sovereignly intervenes to protect Sarah, restrain Abimelech, and preserve His divine plan. Ultimately, the account highlights that God is the True R...

How do you know when to cut loose a relationship and when to keep showing up? Throughout the life of Abraham, his nephew Lot creates consistent complication and trouble. While it would have been easy for Abraham to let Lot suffer the consequences of his decision, he steps up to ask God to spare Lot’s life and family from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Faithfulness to God also looks like pe...

How can God remain faithful to us when we are unfaithful to him? Abraham’s story brings this tension to life. As we watch Abraham and Sarah take matters into their own hands, we can learn how God redeems our failures, even those that lead to the most challenging consequences.

What does it mean to be one of God's people? The life of Abraham gives us a very specific picture of what that means. In Genesis chapter 15, we will explore what it means to be in a covenant relationship with God. The good news is, just like Abraham, it doesn't take perfection.

What does it mean to live a blessed life? Or more importantly, how do you live one? The answers to these questions are quite the opposite to common wisdom. As we look at Abraham‘s interactions with the surrounding nations and rulers, we will get to see a clear picture of exactly what a blessed life looks like and how to experience it.

Continuing in Abram’s journey, we see that growing in faith is often a process of learning to trust God through difficult circumstances. While Abram is far from perfect, God remains faithful. Our hope rests not in our ability to get everything right, but in the God who faithfully pursues us and teaches us to trust Him.

Although Abraham lived more than 4,000 years ago, his story bears many similarities to our own. Like us, he carried a past, held hopes and dreams, navigated complex relationships, and faced an uncertain future. As we follow his journey, we discover that his story is also our story. It is the human story. Yet Abraham’s life is also part of a much bigger story, the story of God’s faithful pursuit of...

The challenge of this series is that considering God as Triune is complex and often creates confusion. However, as challenging as thinking about the Trinity can be, relating to Him does not need to be. We were literally made to be in relationship with the Triune God. Relating to Him may feel awkward in the beginning, but as we engage in relationship with God, it becomes natural, because it is in o...

The fall of humankind wasn’t a surprise to God. Before creation He knew and made a plan for salvation. This plan highlights His good and loving nature. It also highlights how the Father, Son and Spirit work in agreement to rescue us. Our job is simply to respond to His invitation of salvation.

The reality of the Trinity reveals some very important things about why God created the universe, the world, and us. God didn’t create in order to rule, and He didn’t create because He was not completely satisfied. He created as an overflow of His nature. Before Creation, the triune God existed in perfect loving unity between each of the persons of the Trinity. Creation is an overflow of His love...

When considering God, we have a tendency to think about Him in a way that best fits our own expectations. However, because God has revealed Himself though creation, His Word, and the Son, we have the amazing gift of relating to Him based on who He is, not who we expect Him to be. One of the most foundational aspects of God is that He is triune. One God in three distinct persons. In this series we...

We finish the Book of Judges where we began. The foundational problem of humanity is a problem of the heart. But this problem doesn’t stay in the heart, it spreads to every relationship and infects every community with the destructive consequences of sin. Judges leaves no room to think we could possibly rescue ourselves. And that’s the point.

As we approach the end of the book of Judges we find a two part conclusion to this exploration of a society where, without a king, everyone does what is right in their own eyes. The first, in Chapters 17-18, reveals what lies underneath the choices we make that take us gradually down the wrong path. When we substitute our preferences for the revealed character and will of God, we slip into a form...

The story of Samson is disturbing, not inspiring.  If we focus on his exploits we might think he’s a man to look up to. But this is not the account of a great hero of the faith.  Rather, Samson teaches and warns us by his bad example of misused potential.  The Spirit of the Lord stirred him, but he was driven by his own cravings, lust, pride, and anger.  He was the leader Israel deserved, personif...

When facing the consequences of our own bad choices, it can become easy to simply seek an escape from the pain we’ve caused ourselves instead of slowing down to ask ourselves what was underneath those actions. God isn’t after our behavior, He’s after our hearts and our behavior is usually just a sign of what we really love. Repentance means to turn one’s heart back to God, relationally. As we disc...

Most things we need to learn, we need to learn repeatedly and in deeper ways. Such is the lesson of not relying on our own strength to solve life’s problems. This is exactly what the life of Gideon teaches us. It so strongly echoes the story of Moses and Exodus that the we are reminded how we are prone to look for strength in other things and other people instead of truly trusting God. And just li...

Last week we saw that God chooses who He uses, and sometimes He chooses to use some pretty unlikely people. In the account of Deborah and Barak we see that although Israel had a military general to lead their army, God provided wisdom, direction, victory, and rescue for His people through a pair of women–a highly unlikely scenario in the ancient Near East.

Can God use some people, but not others? Does He want to use me? We struggle with these kinds of questions, but Judges helps us with the answers. God chooses who He uses. No matter what your story has been, He can utilize you for a great purpose as He offers rescue and transformation in the midst of the struggles you face.

Forgetting God leads to forsaking Him for idols and lasting consequences. We may experience God’s discipline, but if we do, it is evidence of his mercy. Each generation must choose for themselves whether they will follow God. Our responsibility is to pass on “lived knowledge” of God.

In this introductory message to our Judges series we ask one big question. Between the end of Joshua, a time in history when Israel experienced God fulfilling His promises, and the end of Judges, how could Israel have drifted so far off course that “Everyone did what was right in their own eyes”? And how do we, who also have access to God’s faithful promises, avoid a similar outcome in our own liv...

Following Jesus was never meant to be casual. As large crowds gathered around Him, Jesus challenged them to consider what it truly means to be His disciple. He wasn’t interested in attracting admirers; He was calling people to wholehearted surrender. The question isn’t whether discipleship will cost us something—we all sacrifice for what we value most. The question is whether Jesus is worth more t...

The question isn’t whether or not you’ll be a model for the next generation. We are all modeling something. The question is, what are we modeling? God gave the children of Israel, a way to think about bringing up the next generation in a way that causes them to love God. In this famous passage often referred to as the “Shema” we not only see that parents are the primary disciple makers for their c...

Not only does Jesus call his followers disciples, but he commands them to make disciples. This command has carried the church forward to 2,000 years. But this call isn’t about reproducing our own cultures and personalities in others. It’s about all peoples, cultures and individuals hearing the good news of Jesus, being identified with the triune God, and joining Jesus in His mission to rescue all...